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Topic: I just got pulled over for speeding!!!!!!!!!!!! (Read 3790 times)

Err, I lied. I did get pulled though for riding with no headlight when it was rather, erm, dark and I'm on the motorway (Freeway?).

Riding along happily and then heard a horn 'beep beep'. I pulled over to find no rear light. Damn. No spare bulb. Never mind. Set the brake light to be on permanently until I get to the next garage and change it. Vibration I guess.Set the switch to 'on' via the tension spring into a different hole on the rear brake quadrant and it appears to work OK. Start engine. Front lights on; brake light goes off. Switch off front lights. Rear brake light comes on. Weird. Cut a long story short I'm twenty five miles from home on a motorway so what to do. I decided to have the rear light on for safety and tailgate a lorry for light!!! Went OK, then he went on where I had to turn off. Damn. Scary dark ride with only overtaking cars for illumination. Got to garage. Tried another bulb. Nope. Still the same. Getting very dark now. set-off anyway.Got within two miles of home when a Police car overtook me and immediately on went the blue/red flashing lights. Long story short; they escorted me a to the local petrol station as I said it had only just blown the front lamp. They had a bit of a talk about prosecutions for no light. etc etc. Waited until I had undone the headlight to check wiring (yes, I know it worked but!). I started the engine, turned on the switch and Voila. The headlight worked except they can't/didn't now see the rear light that has gone off!!! They then checked my bike registration and said it didn't tie up with my bike. I changed it last week and explained the procedure so they accepted that it was right and that the database couldn't have been upgraded yet. I then had the "We don't want to deal with you dead" talk which I agreed with and then off they went.I eventually got home by toggling the switch between front and a rear light on expecting them to turn around and catch me out as I'm in paranoid mode now. Once home first thing was a quick check and I found all this was the result of just too much paint (yeah really) around the rear light earth point in the mudguard (fender?). Cleaned it back to bare metal around the hole and added a sharp edged 'star' washer and all is fine again.Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!

Must have been too near end of shift to bother...but hey, good luck/bad luck! Two "goods": didn't get totalled with no light(s) and didn't get busted versus one "bad", light failed, so on balance in front!These parts, scuffers only interested in the extremes: dropping litter in City Centre or shootings in the rest. Middling stuff seems to be of little priority!

Hope you don't mind if I amend from a UK perspective:"It surprises me that at the ripe old age of 59 I still harbor more resentment towards the semi-literate members of the police (and these are now an ever increasing proportion) that I did when I was 17! "

Neat thing about an RE is that you can be racing hard through the gears, and no one else on the road even knows it. It's more fun to go fast on a slow bike than it is to go slow on a fast bike. Just look at the pained expression on the faces of guys on massive sport bikes as they poke along in traffic. They're having no fun at all.

I just made a twenty five mile ride home with no head light, then found out it would come on if the bars are turned, hit the high beam same thing but then the high beam switch stayed on it just got brighter when the high beam was on. Got home to show the wife and now everything is fine.RE built like a jammed gun, but I love it

Bet the connectors are pulling off the bulb. They get mangled when the headlight goes in as the speedo cable gets in the way! I used different spade connectors and bent the bulb's terminals to the side to clear and it's all OK again.

It's more fun to go fast on a slow bike than it is to go slow on a fast bike.

Absolutely!

My riding skills are limited, and it's fun to ride these tiddlers where even I can push the bike towards its limit! My other smile-generators have been an HD-Sprint 350 and a Honda CB175 (bored out to a whopping 200cc and dressed up as a cafe racer in lemon yellow with a lime green racing stripe). All the other bikes I've had (except for my Urals) have exceeded my own riding skills.

I'll never forget blasting onto the interstate WFO on the lil' Honda cafe racer with a big grin on my face - and passing two chicks on Sportsters. Well, they wouldn't stand for some twit on a teeny jap-bike to pass them, so about a 1/2 mile later they go flying past me. I doubt that they'll ever understand the fun of crouched down, wind-cheating WFO on the interstate, or being tucked in leaning hard into a sharp turn on a teeny bike and accelerating all the way thru with the music of the exhaust screaming in your ears....shame really.

That's why I say you can ride the Isle of Man TT anwhere you are - as long as you're on your RE!

All very, very true. Another thing I like about about riding the Bullet is riding along country roads at what seems very close to the top of the bike's range - and not having to slow down to get round bends like the faster bikes do.

It's gotten almost too cold to ride in the mornings here (I was displaced from Indiana to the frozen tundra of Minnesota). At this point, I wish I had moved south instead of north, but that's water under the bridge at this point...

Here on the FL panhandle, it's just getting into the riding season. About the only time I don't want to dide is for about a month in the middle os the summer, and a month or two in the middle of the winter.